The Radicalization of the GOP is the Most Important Political Story Today (via Moyers & Company)
Rep. Peter King (R-NY) once claimed that “80 to 85 percent of mosques in this country are controlled by Islamic fundamentalists” and called those who worship in them “an enemy living amongst us.” He held McCarthyesque hearings into the supposed…
We have the benefit of hind sight, so let’s use it. The DLC and the clan of the Clintons hit on a strategy to crowd the center and marginalize the left called “triangulation”. The premise was that conservatives would be forced ever farther right until the distance from the electoral center became unsustainable. The first part happened. The ACA is a perfect illustration of that effect. It was a Republican and Heritage Foundation plan from which the right had to run screaming once the Democrats embraced it. The forces of reaction have pushed the Republicans to the extreme right. But in the absence of a balancing restraining force from the largely evacuated left the center shifted proportionally. Yes the lack of spine and intellectual heft in the MSM plays a big part in this dislocation. The right wing garbage that has achieved centrist legitimacy is breathtaking. The Ryan budget is given gravitas. Progressive taxation has been rebranded as redistribution. Catastrophic financial deregulation is right back in the center of political thinking four years after causing a near global depression. The deficit and debt are pointed to in justification of cuts to Medicare and Social Security without anyone remembering that fully half the debt accumulated because of unfunded tax cuts and two wars fought on a credit card. No one even notices the special tax status of the hedge fund managers. Everything that passes for tax reform in the last two decades was little more than a revenue trap giving enormous relief to the wealthy while trapping state and federal governments in perpetual shortfalls. Both parties have embraced cuts in corporate taxes that they don’t pay in the first place. Corporate and wealthy tax evasion is absolutely epidemic and a presidential candidate for the Republican Party pointed to it as a sign of his competence. The EPA is an apologist for fracking. The management of a blow out in the Gulf is handed over to the polluter. Pipelines are leaking all over the place and the Keystone deal is just waiting for the right news distraction to get approved. Unions and organizing have been trashed. Increases in the minimum wage are a talking point completely unsupported by action. COLA’s are being adulterated in an absolute con job. The abuse of the poor is unrelenting and both parties are wedded to food stamp cuts. There is no accident, this was a strategic choice. The concentration of wealth is its progeny. To paraphrase Truman, in an election between two Republicans, the Republicans always win.